Jakarta's POI project makes it easy to read and write Excel files and provides support for manipulating other documents based on Microsoft's OLE 2 Compound Document Format. This article contains a step-by-step walkthrough that shows you how to get started with the Jakarta POI project.

by Samudra Gupta

Sep 18, 2003

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The Excel Document Model
From the HSSF point of view, the Excel document is divided into a Workbook, one or more Worksheets, Worksheet consists of rows. Rows have multiple cells and cells can have different display attributes and formula attached to them. This overall structure is as depicted in Figure 1.